Don Nelson’s tired record chase: Three more wins, zero more purpose

Let’s say, just for fun, that you’re a multi-billionaire who just bought the Warriors.

You realize there are some troubling issues with attitude, payroll balance and talent deficiencies, but you also know you have some young players who have the chance to be quite good.

And you absolutely realize that you have an incredibly passionate fan base that is just dying to get excited about the Warriors again.

Now you’ve got to decide who should coach this group and earn back credibility with the Bay Area populace.

That’s sort of important, you know… it’s not something that should be decided because of intra-office political warfare or to justify failed PR efforts.

So important that, when you’re presented with one particular candidate, you realize he hits just about everything you ABSOLUTELY DON’T WANT/CAN’T HAVE in a Warriors coach…

-About to turn 70, on his last gasp, staying just for the money, and the players know it;

-Would’ve been fired a year ago if not for his political manuevering;

-Has alienated Monta Ellis, Anthony Randolph, Andris Biedrins and maybe a few more fairly important players;

-Runs a no-defense system that exaggerates individual scoring totals and exacerbates every lazy quality in his players, and yes, I’m talking about you, Corey Maggette;

-Has lost the faith of loyal Warriors fans;

-In no way will be the coach beyond next season, unless he can trick another team president/owner, so he’s a lame-duck no matter what;

-Has a habit of tricking owners/presidents into long-term deals, getting rid of the middle-managers who hired him in the first place, and then doing everything possible to bail out of the situation, as long as he’s paid every penny.

Basically, if you were free to choose a coach for the Warriors from scratch, it’s pretty clear that Don Nelson would be the last guy you’d ever pick.

Which is my long way of getting into the point: ALL OF THOSE THINGS are 100 times more important than Nelson’s quest to pass Lenny Wilkens’ NBA all-time victories total.

The record does not matter. None of it matters. I realize smart fans want to analyze every aspect of it, as it pertains to Nelson’s tenure… but it doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter emotionally (have you heard one person say: Gee, I’ve just gotta be there when Nelson breaks the record, what a moment!), doesn’t matter historically (Jerry Sloan will blow past the number soon enough–and it’s not like Wilkens is considered a coaching legend, anyway), and surely doesn’t affect Nelson’s view of his stay here.

He’s owed $6M next year and Nelson’s going to make sure he’s paid that money, no matter what. He’s not quitting or taking a buy-out for a dollar less than he’s owed.

By the way, Nelson needs three more victories in the Warriors’ final eight games–and it’s gettable, given the soft schedule–to break the record. Whoo hoo.

I realize that some fans are anxiously following the countdown, believing that the only way Nelson quits or gets fired this off-season is if he already has the record.

But I repeat what I’ve said for a long time: With or without the record, Nelson isn’t quitting. He earned that $6M next year by tricking Rowell–not too difficult to do, I realize.

In fact, the record-chase is a perfect manifestation of the Nelson problem: His best attribute is his knack for figuring out ways to keep things entertaining and shuffling new players in every month who can score 20 points on random nights, win or lose.

(Isn’t it weird that the coach who has stuck around this long has done so by burning through so many different players/GMs/situations? Maybe that’s actually the secret: Nelson is always looking for the next group of players to prove he deserves more money/another job, so he can’t ever settle on the group he has.)

But the Warriors need stability and core defensive principles, not a carnival act.

And, though I suspected Chris Cohan and Robert Rowell were considering firing Nelson a few months ago in order to potentially drum up ticket sales for next year (if they could hire a semi-exciting new coach), the public sales process now precludes such a big financial move, in my opinion.

So with the sale discussions expected to last far into summer, well past the normal time when you’d make a coaching change, I’d look for Larry Ellison or whoever ends up with the team to be forced into a late-summer/early-fall firing of Nelson.

There’s a precedent: Nelson replaced Mike Montgomery on Aug. 30, 2006, and that didn’t turn out too bad in the short-term (immediate playoff run, which, alas, was the only one in the Cohan era or the Nelson 2.0 era or the Mullin era or the Baron Davis era or even the Pietrus era).

If you’re serious about winning back credibility, you just can’t have Don Nelson as the Warriors coach next season, and if that means you have to make a late hire (or go with Keith Smart for a year and see what he can do), that’s what it means.

Whether or not Nelson has the all-time wins mark, whether he’s tied, or whether he remains three wins short, Nelson is precisely the guy you need far away from all decisions.

He won’t mind. He’ll have his $6M coming–he can buy two more houses in Maui with that and get to trying to trick somebody else into hiring him.